The present invention relates to the internet arts. It finds particular application to a method and system for internationalizing internet domain names such that a non-compliant international domain name can be processed by the existing internet structure.
With the proliferation and extremely fast adoption of the Internet around the globe, the need for international capabilities on the Net has become a matter of absolute necessity. A lot of work has been done so far on the subject of localization of scripts and the internationalization (I18N) of systems. However, up to this date, the Internet has remained more associated and very tightly dependent upon the English language since the current Domain Name System (DNS) is presently restricted to the monocase 7 bit ASCII English language alphabet.
The Domain Name System is the part of the Internet infrastructure that translates human-readable domain names into the Internet Protocol (IP) numbers needed to establish TCP/IP communication over the Internet. So far, existing domain name server systems accept only domain names according to RFC1035. RFC1035 specifies the alphabet (set of allowed symbols), the syntax and all restrictions for permissible/valid domain names. Currently, only A to Z upper case, a to z lower case, the "-" and "." are permitted.
There have been proposals which suggest changing the domain name server system to accommodate I18N. While the proposed solution could work, it requires major changes to the Internet as it exists today. Domain name servers around the globe, which number in the thousands, would have to be changed or updated. In the meantime, existing domain name servers would not be able to handle the new queries sent to them by I18N-enabled domain name servers. Results of these I18N queries can vary anywhere from single rejection to a complete crash of the non-enabled domain name servers.
The present invention provides a solution to this problem in that the present invention would allow users of the Internet to use international domain names mainly in their own script or characters. The present invention works with the existing domain name servers around the world and does not require any updates to be applied to these servers nor any changes to be made to their configurations.
The present invention provides a new and unique method and system for internationalizing domain names which cures the above problems and others.